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St Peter,
Swainsthorpe

Derek Mortlock is a kind and generous
writer, and in his elegant Popular Guide to the
Churches of Norfolk he can find little to say about
Swainsthorpe. And yet, he obviously liked it a good deal,
and that was exactly how I felt about it. Here is a
simple little round towered church, within sight of the
busy A140 but with a sense of deep rural peace about it.
Peter and I came here on the only gloomy day in March,
and in truth the weather was at its worst while we were
at Swainsthorpe, a haze of drizzle settling on the small
graveyard. The pretty Decorated east window faces the
lane, and beyond the chancel and small aisled nave huddle
beneath the round tower with its later octagonal top. The
run off pipes from the gargoyles look disconcertingly
like shot guns - but then, we are in Norfolk.

Inside,
the nave is again simple, Victorianised with tiles and
pitch pine benches. The font is in the style of those
13th century Purbeck marble ones you find so often in
East Anglia, octagonal with sixteen arcades. It may be a
recut old one, but is as likely entirely Victorian, as is
the collonade on which it sits.There's a curious heating
control beside the font made by Gidney of Dereham, which
must be contemporary with the restoration.

Mortlock
liked the memorials best, and so did I. They are not to
citizens of the first rank, but are typical of the way in
which a country parish, over the years, has chosen to
remember its members who were significant. The best is
the brass plaque on the chancel wall to one Gilbert
Havers who served Quene Elizabeth. Captaine in
Barwick (Berwick), then in Scotland, after in
Ireland, and last in the Netherlands 22 years... He lyved
87 years and dyed the 5 of May 1628.

Out in the
graveyard to the south-west of the tower is a great
curiosity, the like of which I cannot remember seeing
anywhere else in East Anglia before. It is an Art Deco
tombstone of the 1930s, designed in the style you might
find in a cinema of the time, with mirror mosaic inlays
and aquamarine paintwork on either side. If a miniature
organ were to rise out of the ground in front of it, the
illusion would be complete.